Best Cut-Outs & More: 10 Essential Holiday Cookie Recipes

It's the season when cookies come into their own, hung by ribbons from glittering trees and gracing dessert plates from the office potluck to fancy holiday dinners. Stars, trees, angels, rustic thumbprints, sugar-dusted shapes and spicy gingerbread — this is their time.

But did you know that sugar cookies are not only delicious and decorative, but that they can actually save the day? This was the case for a reader named Jenna last year. She was making a huge batch of 200 cookies for a friend's work event, and a famous chef's sugar cookie recipe utterly failed. So she turned to our Best Cut-Out Sugar Cookies recipe, and they "worked like a dream," she said.

We don't want to toot our own horn, but we do love this recipe to pieces. It's an essential for Christmas baking: Fuss-free, reliable, and delicious to eat.

We're bringing you this recipe today, as well as nine other cookie recipes we've deemed essential for winter holiday baking. Try one or two — we hope you'll find a new favorite and that perhaps one will even save the day for you as well.

BOTTOM ROW• 6 The Best Chewy Chocolate Cookies - These are nonfat, ultra-chewy and gluten-free! And they are perhaps the most delicious cookie on this list, too. • 7 Life-Changing Vegan Thumbprints - Where would a cookie exchange be without jammy thumbprints? These just happen to be vegan. • 8 Hamantaschen - These jam-filled tricorner cookies are traditionally made for Purim, but some friends make them for Hanukkah as well. It's never the wrong time for these little goodies! • 9 Super-Soft Snickerdoodle Cookies - A classic holiday cookie. These are ultra-soft, just the way I like them. • 10 Rosemary-Walnut Brown Butter Cookies - I make these icebox cookies and slice and bake them off as needed. So delicious — a holiday cookie for grownups.

Those are the essentials that we'll probably bake this year. It leaves off a few others that come to mind, though, like extra-spicy gingerbread and pressed-out spritz cookies. What are your holiday cookie essentials?